Bastianini and The Ducati Lenovo Team third in Sepang sprint race. Bagnaia crashes out of second place

• Jorge Martín takes the win aboard Pramac Racing Team’s Ducati machine. Marc Márquez and Alex Márquez (Gresini Racing MotoGP) are second and fourth, respectively

The standard bearers of the Ducati Lenovo Team have tackled today the second day of action for the Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang International Circuit. Enea Bastianini finished the penultimate sprint race of the season in third place, while Francesco Bagnaia’s performance drew to an early close due to a crash.

Bastianini had a good start from sixth place on the grid as he moved up two positions and pulled away from the following riders while trying – at the same time – to bridge the gap to the three opponents ahead. Enea displayed a quick and consistent pace, despite a drop of grip in the final stages, as he crossed the line third with a 2.2secs gap from the race winner.

After taking pole position and setting the new outright lap record for the track, Bagnaia was unable to stay in first position despite a good start to the encounter. Pecco managed to stay on Mártin’s tail in the early stages but ended up tucking the front at turn nine during lap three.

The Ducati Lenovo Team will return to action tomorrow at 10:40 local time (GMT +8) for the warmup session, with the 20-lap, nineteenth race of the season getting underway at 15:00.

Enea Bastianini (#23 Ducati Lenovo Team) – 3rd
“It was quite a difficult sprint race and surely, I could have done without the morning crash. Today, in the race, I was unable to lap with the same pace I showed in previous sessions and struggled a lot more. There was a point in the encounter where I got closer to the frontrunners, but then the grip dropped a lot and ended up losing ground. We need to analyse the data because we’d like to do a little better tomorrow. The other frontrunners did make a little step forward performance wise, while we kind of stayed at the same level. We’ll try to improve before the race.”

Francesco Bagnaia (#1 Ducati Lenovo Team) – DNF
“Unfortunately, on that lap I didn’t brake as hard to avoid reaching the limit, which forced me to lean a bit more. There’s a bump in that very spot and I ran over it, and the front tucked. We know how tricky turn nine is and that was the deciding factor for the crash. These things shouldn’t happen, but unfortunately, they do sometimes. This year, most of my mistakes came in the sprint races and in this regard, Jorge (Martín) has done a better job. Now it’s almost impossible to recover given the 29-point gap, but we’ll keep giving it all – as we always do – as long as we’re still mathematically in contention”.